Fascinating Chinglish – “ungelivable”
Living in Shanghai is always interesting, and learning Chinese even more so. How else could I have come across a Chinglish gem like this?
The Mandarin word “gĕilì” (给力) literally means “to give more power” or “to give more force”. Thanks to the ever-increasing spread of English in China, this has given rise to the wonderful portmanteau “ungelivable”.
A mixture of “gĕilì” and “unbelievable”, the slang word originating on the internet has come to mean “not strong enough”, and is an interesting example of how two very different languages can sometimes fit together to create a fairly seamless compound.
While it’s not going to be making its way into the English or Chinese dictionaries any time soon, “ungelivable” also shows how powerful the internet is as a tool to spread ideas. The word spread so quickly, especially among the younger generation, that knowledge of it has rapidly become commonplace – even if usage has not.
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Banished words are epic fail | Language Training for Corporations & Individuals said,
January 10, 2011 @ 12:39 pm
[...] I blogged about how the internet was instrumental in helping to coin and spread new phrases in China. However, as with all things, there is another side to the [...]
One man dies, a quotation is born | Language Training for Corporations & Individuals said,
May 5, 2011 @ 12:26 pm
[...] power of the internet, that something can spread so fast, even if it’s incorrectly sourced. A while ago I posted about “ungelivable”, a Chinese-English hybrid word that sprung up out of nowhere and became extremely popular in China [...]